Roma Chatterji
Biographic Data
| ID | 3636442 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Roma Chatterji |
| GIVEN NAMES | Roma |
| FAMILY NAME | Chatterji |
| SIGNATURE | CHATTERJI R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Delhi |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4386-3514 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 24 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1985 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Temporal Rhythms in Village Life
This chapter explores “historicality” in rural Purulia, West Bengal, contrasting Ranajit Guha's concept with colonial historiography. It emphasises how villagers experience history through everyday rhythms of abundance and scarcity tied to agricultural cycles, particularly paddy cultivation. Ethnographic vignettes from Chorida village illustrate how rituals and festivals align with these cycles, offering moments of abundance against lean months. …
Tradition and novelty: A folk artist’s experiment with the comics medium
This essay seeks to problematise the conception of folk art and craft traditions of scholars such as Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, who assume that while these are the repositories of India’s ancient heritage, the practitioners of these crafts are humble vessels who pass them on faithfully without much understanding of their inherent meaning. Coomaraswamy’s work may seem dated in comparison with contemporary scholarship in the field, but his ideas conti…
The Dutch verpleeghuis (nursing home) and its underground traditions
A Ramayana for Our Times: Superheroes, Science Fiction and Myth
Recent retellings of Indian epics draw upon science fiction. This article discusses an Indian superhero comic based on the Ramayana in which Rama, the central figure in the epic, is portrayed as the superhero Nagraj. The story uses the figure of the avatara (reincarnated one) to align the world of the epics with the contemporary world by incorporating science-fiction elements into their stories. It may seem that these retellings are drawing on st…
Boundaries, Names, Alterities: A Case Study of a “Communal Riot” in Dharavi, Bombay
Myths and the Visual Imagination
Keeping in mind that myths do not exist outside the specific forms in which they are expressed this chapter will explore a particular theme that occurs repeatedly in the Gondi Ramayana paying particular attention to its translation from the aural to the visual medium. Gond art may be a recent development in the art world but its roots are firmly embedded in a mythic tradition that is transmitted aurally. The present generation of Gond artists oft…
Seriality and millennial fandom in the Indian superhero comic Nagraj
From the 1980s to the early 2000s, Raj Comics went from selling 3 lakh copies a year to adorning railway bookstalls in Central India. Despite being absent from the multimedia convergence moment enjoyed by comic book characters worldwide in the first two decades of the 21st Century. Nagraj, their most successful superhero character boasts a dedicated fanbase that continues to engage with the rapidly vanishing superhero Nagraj. This paper focuses o…
Myths, Similes and Memory Traces: Images of Abduction in the Ramayana Universe
In this essay, the Ramayana is conceptualised not merely as a text but as a narrative universe constituted by the multiplicity of its telling. Each telling is unique and involves combining fragments or narrative elements in particular ways. This universe occupies not merely a geographical but also a kind of virtual topological space made up of the relation between narrative elements. The argument is exemplified at two levels, first through an abs…
Ankur Datta, On Uncertain Ground. Displaced Kashmiri Pandits in Jammu and Kashmir
Tarak Chandra Das: An Unsung Hero of Indian Anthropology, by Abhijit Guha
"Tarak Chandra Das: An Unsung Hero of Indian Anthropology, by Abhijit Guha." Anthropological Forum, 27(3), pp. 280–281
Scripting the Folk: History, Folklore, and the Imagination of Place in Bengal
Although the notion of world anthropology has opened up a space to consider non-Western scholarly traditions as crucial in the making of anthropology as a discipline, it is still too readily assumed that the boundaries of the political community are coterminous with the boundaries of scholarly traditions. This article departs from this assumption by arguing that the privileging of a regional tradition, that of folklore studies in Bengal, provided…
Comic Gags and the Mahabharata War
Taking the view that the Mahabharata is a narrative universe rather than just a text, this article explores a new comics experiment that creatively inserts a story within that universe. Using a modified manga style of comics storytelling Shohei Emura and Vidyun Sabhaney provide an alternate telling to the Great Mahabharata War using the canonical tropes and technical devices such as panel size, page layout, word–image relationship and so on that …
Wording the World: Veena Das and Scenes of Inheritance
Wording the World: Veena Das and Scenes of Inheritance (Forms of Living)
"The essays in this book explore the critical possibilities that have been opened by Veena Das's work. They search for disciplinary resources to contest the implicit division between those whose pain receives attention and those whose pain is seen as out of sync with the times and hence written out of the historical record. Another theme is the co-constitution of the event and the everyday, especially in the context of violence. Das's groundbreak…
One Conversations, Generations, Genres: Anthropological Knowing as a Form of Life
Wording the World: Veena Das and Scenes of Inheritance
The essays in this book explore the critical possibilities that have been opened by Veena Das’s work. They search for disciplinary resources to contest the implicit division between those whose pain receives attention and those whose pain is seen as out of sync with the times and hence written out of the historical record. Another theme is the co-constitution of the event and the everyday, especially in the context of violence. Das’s groundbreaki…
Voice, Event and Narrative: Towards an Understanding of Everyday Life in Dharavi
Plans, habitation and slum redevelopment: The production of community in Dharavi, Mumbai
This article describes the process by which governmental technologies such as mapping and enumeration constitute new types of community by looking at housing practices in a slum, Dharavi, in Mumbai. The article is divided into three sections. In the first section present a review of the slum development policies, focusing specifically on the shifting relations between the government and the slum population. It is through this interface that the f…
Boundaries, Names, Alterities: A Case Study of a "Communal Riot" in Dharavi, Bombay
An Ethnography of Dementia
The System of Hope: The Constitution of Identity in Medical Institutions
Cet article commente trois monographies qui traitent de l'institution medicale aux Pays-Bas. Deux d'entre elles concernent des maisons de sante pour personnes agees atteintes de maladies chroniques et terminales, la troisieme concerne un institut de recherche et de traitement du cancer. Le contraste observe dans l'accueil reserve a ces travaux eclaire la place de la souffrance et de la maladie dans la societe neerlandaise. A travers l'analyse que…
The Voyage of the Hero: The Self and the Other in One Narrative Tradition of Purulia
Analyse de six recits appartenant au genre Kahanu qui illustrent le passage qualitatif d'une personnalite conflictuelle du heros a la resolution de ses contradictions et a la capacite d'assumer la communication avec autrui : symbolisme du theme du voyage du heros comme rite de passage
Plans, habitation and slum redevelopment: The production of community in Dharavi, Mumbai
This article describes the process by which governmental technologies such as mapping and enumeration constitute new types of community by looking at housing practices in a slum, Dharavi, in Mumbai. The article is divided into three sections. In the first section present a review of the slum development policies, focusing specifically on the shifting relations between the government and the slum population. It is through this interface that the f…
Scripting the Folk: History, Folklore, and the Imagination of Place in Bengal
Although the notion of world anthropology has opened up a space to consider non-Western scholarly traditions as crucial in the making of anthropology as a discipline, it is still too readily assumed that the boundaries of the political community are coterminous with the boundaries of scholarly traditions. This article departs from this assumption by arguing that the privileging of a regional tradition, that of folklore studies in Bengal, provided…
A Ramayana for Our Times: Superheroes, Science Fiction and Myth
Recent retellings of Indian epics draw upon science fiction. This article discusses an Indian superhero comic based on the Ramayana in which Rama, the central figure in the epic, is portrayed as the superhero Nagraj. The story uses the figure of the avatara (reincarnated one) to align the world of the epics with the contemporary world by incorporating science-fiction elements into their stories. It may seem that these retellings are drawing on st…
The Voyage of the Hero: The Self and the Other in One Narrative Tradition of Purulia
Analyse de six recits appartenant au genre Kahanu qui illustrent le passage qualitatif d'une personnalite conflictuelle du heros a la resolution de ses contradictions et a la capacite d'assumer la communication avec autrui : symbolisme du theme du voyage du heros comme rite de passage
The Voyage of the Hero: The Self and the Other in One Narrative Tradition of Purulia
Analyse de six recits appartenant au genre Kahanu qui illustrent le passage qualitatif d'une personnalite conflictuelle du heros a la resolution de ses contradictions et a la capacite d'assumer la communication avec autrui : symbolisme du theme du voyage du heros comme rite de passage
The System of Hope: The Constitution of Identity in Medical Institutions
Cet article commente trois monographies qui traitent de l'institution medicale aux Pays-Bas. Deux d'entre elles concernent des maisons de sante pour personnes agees atteintes de maladies chroniques et terminales, la troisieme concerne un institut de recherche et de traitement du cancer. Le contraste observe dans l'accueil reserve a ces travaux eclaire la place de la souffrance et de la maladie dans la societe neerlandaise. A travers l'analyse que…
An Ethnography of Dementia
Boundaries, Names, Alterities: A Case Study of a "Communal Riot" in Dharavi, Bombay
Voice, Event and Narrative: Towards an Understanding of Everyday Life in Dharavi
Plans, habitation and slum redevelopment: The production of community in Dharavi, Mumbai
This article describes the process by which governmental technologies such as mapping and enumeration constitute new types of community by looking at housing practices in a slum, Dharavi, in Mumbai. The article is divided into three sections. In the first section present a review of the slum development policies, focusing specifically on the shifting relations between the government and the slum population. It is through this interface that the f…
Wording the World: Veena Das and Scenes of Inheritance
Wording the World: Veena Das and Scenes of Inheritance (Forms of Living)
"The essays in this book explore the critical possibilities that have been opened by Veena Das's work. They search for disciplinary resources to contest the implicit division between those whose pain receives attention and those whose pain is seen as out of sync with the times and hence written out of the historical record. Another theme is the co-constitution of the event and the everyday, especially in the context of violence. Das's groundbreak…
One Conversations, Generations, Genres: Anthropological Knowing as a Form of Life
Wording the World: Veena Das and Scenes of Inheritance
The essays in this book explore the critical possibilities that have been opened by Veena Das’s work. They search for disciplinary resources to contest the implicit division between those whose pain receives attention and those whose pain is seen as out of sync with the times and hence written out of the historical record. Another theme is the co-constitution of the event and the everyday, especially in the context of violence. Das’s groundbreaki…
Comic Gags and the Mahabharata War
Taking the view that the Mahabharata is a narrative universe rather than just a text, this article explores a new comics experiment that creatively inserts a story within that universe. Using a modified manga style of comics storytelling Shohei Emura and Vidyun Sabhaney provide an alternate telling to the Great Mahabharata War using the canonical tropes and technical devices such as panel size, page layout, word–image relationship and so on that …
Scripting the Folk: History, Folklore, and the Imagination of Place in Bengal
Although the notion of world anthropology has opened up a space to consider non-Western scholarly traditions as crucial in the making of anthropology as a discipline, it is still too readily assumed that the boundaries of the political community are coterminous with the boundaries of scholarly traditions. This article departs from this assumption by arguing that the privileging of a regional tradition, that of folklore studies in Bengal, provided…
Ankur Datta, On Uncertain Ground. Displaced Kashmiri Pandits in Jammu and Kashmir
Tarak Chandra Das: An Unsung Hero of Indian Anthropology, by Abhijit Guha
"Tarak Chandra Das: An Unsung Hero of Indian Anthropology, by Abhijit Guha." Anthropological Forum, 27(3), pp. 280–281
Seriality and millennial fandom in the Indian superhero comic Nagraj
From the 1980s to the early 2000s, Raj Comics went from selling 3 lakh copies a year to adorning railway bookstalls in Central India. Despite being absent from the multimedia convergence moment enjoyed by comic book characters worldwide in the first two decades of the 21st Century. Nagraj, their most successful superhero character boasts a dedicated fanbase that continues to engage with the rapidly vanishing superhero Nagraj. This paper focuses o…
Myths, Similes and Memory Traces: Images of Abduction in the Ramayana Universe
In this essay, the Ramayana is conceptualised not merely as a text but as a narrative universe constituted by the multiplicity of its telling. Each telling is unique and involves combining fragments or narrative elements in particular ways. This universe occupies not merely a geographical but also a kind of virtual topological space made up of the relation between narrative elements. The argument is exemplified at two levels, first through an abs…
Myths and the Visual Imagination
Keeping in mind that myths do not exist outside the specific forms in which they are expressed this chapter will explore a particular theme that occurs repeatedly in the Gondi Ramayana paying particular attention to its translation from the aural to the visual medium. Gond art may be a recent development in the art world but its roots are firmly embedded in a mythic tradition that is transmitted aurally. The present generation of Gond artists oft…
Boundaries, Names, Alterities: A Case Study of a “Communal Riot” in Dharavi, Bombay
The Dutch verpleeghuis (nursing home) and its underground traditions
A Ramayana for Our Times: Superheroes, Science Fiction and Myth
Recent retellings of Indian epics draw upon science fiction. This article discusses an Indian superhero comic based on the Ramayana in which Rama, the central figure in the epic, is portrayed as the superhero Nagraj. The story uses the figure of the avatara (reincarnated one) to align the world of the epics with the contemporary world by incorporating science-fiction elements into their stories. It may seem that these retellings are drawing on st…
Tradition and novelty: A folk artist’s experiment with the comics medium
This essay seeks to problematise the conception of folk art and craft traditions of scholars such as Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, who assume that while these are the repositories of India’s ancient heritage, the practitioners of these crafts are humble vessels who pass them on faithfully without much understanding of their inherent meaning. Coomaraswamy’s work may seem dated in comparison with contemporary scholarship in the field, but his ideas conti…
Temporal Rhythms in Village Life
This chapter explores “historicality” in rural Purulia, West Bengal, contrasting Ranajit Guha's concept with colonial historiography. It emphasises how villagers experience history through everyday rhythms of abundance and scarcity tied to agricultural cycles, particularly paddy cultivation. Ethnographic vignettes from Chorida village illustrate how rituals and festivals align with these cycles, offering moments of abundance against lean months. …
History (10 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (8 works) · Art (8 works) · Literature (8 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Aesthetics (4 works) · Comics (4 works) · Comics and Graphic Narratives (4 works) · Ethnography (4 works)